Cellular-related quality of service (“QoS”) issues are a significant source of frustration for service providers as well as their customers. Common QoS issues include bandwidth limitations, jitter, delay and latency, packet loss, and interference. QoS issues may result in a number of problems for customers, potentially causing customers to change service providers. In one example, a customer may experience a “dropped call,” in which a phone call unexpectedly ends. In another example, a customer may experience a slow data transfer rate that is not suitable for transferring high-bandwidth content, such as video and music. In yet another example, a customer may experience unacceptable quality of service, causing customer dissatisfaction ranging from annoyance to anger.
A cellular device, such as a cellular phone, typically utilizes a single radio frequency (“RF”) signal path for incoming and outgoing communications. Uncontrollable variations in the RF signal path may affect the available bandwidth and other factors which determine service quality. Further, when the RF signal path is lost, any ongoing communications may be terminated. This may result in dropped calls and other QoS-related problems.